Elections
What the Elections Division does
It keeps the state’s election records and helps county officials conduct federal, state, and district elections.
It maintains Arkansas’s uniform statewide voter registration system and helps the state meet federal requirements such as the National Voter Registration Act and the Help America Vote Act.
It oversees training on the state’s electronic voting systems and answers questions on voting equipment.
It receives candidate filings for U.S. Senate, U.S. House, state, and district offices; files and reviews ballot-access and ballot-measure petitions; and certifies the candidate and measure list for ballot placement.
It compiles county election returns, reports results, and publishes current and historical election results, including historical initiative and referendum results.
It hosts a public search for ethics filings that candidates and officials submit through the state’s ethics process. The Arkansas Ethics Commission remains the ethics regulator.
Chair of the State Board of Election Commissioners
By statute, the Secretary of State is chair and secretary of the seven-member State Board of Election Commissioners.
The Board trains county election commissioners and election officials, monitors compliance with election law, investigates complaints of alleged misconduct, and distributes state funds to counties for specified elections.
Those Board duties sit beside—not instead of—the Elections Division’s filing, registration, equipment, and results work.
Where county officials remain in charge
County clerks and county boards of election commissioners run polling places, appoint poll workers, and administer Election Day in each county.
The State Board’s procedures manual sends voter registration, candidate filing, petitions, tabulation, certification, voting equipment, and interpretation of election laws to the Secretary of State. It sends general procedures, complaints, monitors, reimbursement, and poll-worker training to the Board.
The Secretary of State also sits on the Arkansas Board of Apportionment, the three-member body that draws state legislative districts after each census.
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